Principal System Software Architect

Key Responsibilities

• Hardware/Software Tradeoff Analysis: Drive the right balance between hardware complexity, software complexity, performance, and customer usability at the earliest stages of product definition.
• System Design Evaluation: Assess system designs, IP blocks, data paths, and device configurations from a software perspective, identifying risks and opportunities before RTL is written.
• Customer Advocacy: Act as a strong voice and proxy for customers -- particularly their software teams -- who will ultimately interface with the devices we build. Build direct relationships with internal and external customer SW organizations to deeply understand their needs.
• IP & Accelerator Co-Definition: Propose and co-define new IP blocks, hardware accelerators, and device configurations alongside digital and analog hardware design teams to achieve best-possible system performance.
• Debuggability & Observability: Champion best-in-class debuggability and software visibility into devices, both during bringup and in deployed field environments.
• Early Virtual Platform Development: Build and use SystemC-based functional virtual platforms, or work with early transactional models to validate architecture decisions with real code -- well before silicon availability.
• Data-Driven Decision Making: Use early simulation, profiling, and modeling to quantitatively justify sizing, IP selection, and architectural choices rather than relying on intuition alone.
• Customer Engagement: Meet with technical experts at customer organizations, understand their system-level requirements, and translate those into actionable architectural guidance for internal teams.

Required Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience in system software architecture, embedded systems, or SoC platform software
• Demonstrated ability to work at the hardware/software boundary and influence hardware design decisions
• In-depth experience with AMBA protocols
• Experience with SystemC (TLM 2.0) for virtual platform development and early architecture exploration
• Proficiency in C/C++ with experience writing firmware, drivers, or platform-level software
• Experience with early-stage SoC or ASIC development workflows -- architecture definition through silicon bringup
• Strong understanding of computer architecture fundamentals: memory hierarchies, bus protocols (AXI/AHB/APB), DMA, interrupt architectures, and hardware accelerator integration
• Ability to read and understand RTL (Verilog/SystemVerilog) sufficiently to evaluate hardware design intent and debug integration issues
• Excellent communication skills -- able to present complex tradeoffs to both hardware engineers and customer software teams
• Track record of building relationships with internal and external customers, especially their software/firmware organizations

Preferred Qualifications

• Familiarity with FPGA prototyping workflows and pre-silicon software development
• Experience with hardware emulation platforms (Palladium, etc.)
• Knowledge of signal processing, data converter, or mixed-signal system architectures
• Experience defining or influencing debug/trace infrastructure (e.g., CoreSight, JTAG, embedded trace)
• Background in performance modeling, system-level benchmarking, or workload characterization
• Familiarity with RISC-V or Arm architecture and ecosystem tooling
• Experience with Zephyr RTOS and/or Embedded Linux
• Experience with DevOps practices for platform software (CI/CD, automated testing on virtual platforms)

What Sets This Role Apart

Education